Identification and intervention for adverse childhood experiences in our local community

What are ACES? Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are distressing and/or traumatic events that occur in childhood and can include child abuse/maltreatment or household dysfunction.

Why is this study important? Exposure to multiple ACEs is common and is associated with increased likelihood of high-risk behaviors, behavior problems, academic underachievement and chronic diseases in children.

Who is funding this work? Mayo Clinic Community Health: Assessment and Improvement Measures Program $75,000 grant through the end of 2018.

What are the main goals of the project? To develop local ACEs screening and intervention programs for children and evaluate the impact of these new intervention programs on the mental health and developmental trajectory in children.

What is asked of Rochester Public Schools? To share de-identified data that the programs are already collecting with Mayo Clinic to analyze. For the “Parenting a Child with Spirited or Challenging Behaviors” class, results of parental ACEs screening, resilience measures as well as mental health screening as measured by a questionnaire before and right after the class will be shared. Rochester Early Intervention will have a small group of interested teachers that will pilot asking the ACEs questions and screening results can be shared with parent consent. Ideally, the data is de-identified for each individual child so that results can be compared to other appropriate screening questionnaire results. The surveys utilized in the elementary school trauma-informed training program are already approved as a part of the InSciEd Out curriculum (which has an IRB at Mayo) and only de-identified results will be shared.

What is de-identified data? No use of the child/parent name, race/ethnicity, date of birth, or specific diagnosis. Participants are identified by a keycode and data is transferred via a secure Excel datasheet and only shared with the study team. No participants will be identified on any project summary or publication.

In addition to knowledge gained, how will the grant benefit Rochester Public Schools? The grant will pay for programming including: 1) teacher/supply costs for Parenting a Child with Spirited or Challenging Behaviors class during 2018, 2) Paying for early childhood trauma informed training program(s) from the Washburn Institute, 3) paying for evaluation of the mental health training course for elementary school teachers in a trauma-informed elementary school program on child anxiety, self-esteem and attention.

RECOMMENDATION

It is recommended that the School Board of Independent School District #535 approve the request to share de-identified data with Mayo Clinic as described above.

RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, Independent School District #535 and the Mayo Clinic have agreed to collaborate in the above-defined work; and

WHEREAS, expansion of ACEs/Resilience work aligns with the mission of Independent School District #535; and

WHEREAS, this work will share only de-identified data;

BE IT RESOLVED that the School Board of Independent School District #535 approves the release of ACEs/Resilience data to Mayo Clinic as described above.

On Wednesday, June 13th, 2018 at 11:00 am, the Journey to Growth team, the City of Rochester and citizens of Rochester will gather in the City Hall Atrium for a special Signing Ceremony, designating Rochester as the first U.S. City to join the Council of Europe’s ICI (Intercultural Cities Initiative) program.

Community Beam (dmcbeam.org) is a registry of private and public resources (organizations, projects, initiatives, programs) that underpin economic and social developments of greater Rochester:

For the commercial sector, we tend to register startup activities (new companies and new commercial projects) that bring diversification and high-impact opportunities to the area.

For the non-profit sector, we wish to shine light on all the organizations and services that otherwise labor under relative obscurity.

Our hope is that dmcbeam.org will encourage cross-sector collaborations and creative solutions.

While there are a number of registries in the community, dmcbeam.org's distinct value is to pilot a database with a data structure and categorizations that answer the questions such as: What organizations or projects/programs in our community that have purported relevance with some of the over-arching focuses put forward by initiatives such as DMC, J2G and Health Improvements?

This database could be used as one of the ways to explore the capacities of the community. If you are someone on an exploratory journey to learn about the greater Rochester community. dmcbeam.org could be an interesting first step.

Definitions

The following defines the various project phases:

Available - a product, program or service is in production

Develop - program or application is being developed

Plan - idea is solid, stakeholders are identified, and there is strong commitment to go forward from all parties.

Concept Phase - idea scoped out with enough details to give an early sizing and/or to build a proof of concept demonstration